an innocent little dog, knowing not
evil, dependent on his friends for help to be purified;--necessarily kept
at a distance: the very look of him prescribed extreme separation, as far
as practicable. But they had proof of a love almost greater than it was
previous to the offence, in the tender precautions they took to elude
repulsion.

He was rolling on the rug, communicating contagion. Flasks of
treble-distilled lavender water, and their favourite, traditional in the
family, eau d'Arquebusade, were on the toilet-table. They sprinkled his
basket, liberally sprinkled the rug and the little dog. Perfume-pastilles
were in one of the sitting-rooms below; and Virginia would have gone down
softly to fetch a box, but Dorothea restrained her, in pity for the
servants, with the remark: 'It would give us a nightmare of a Roman
Catholic Cathedral!' A bit of the window was lifted by Dorothea,
cautiously, that prowling outsiders might not be attracted. Tasso was
wooed to his basket. He seemed inquisitive; the antidote of his
naughtiness excited him; his tail circled after his muzzle several times;
then he lay. A silken scarf steeped in eau d'Arquebusade was flung across
him.

Their customary devout observances concluded, lights were extinguished,
and the ladies kissed, and entered their beds.

Their beds were not homely to them. Dorothea thought that Virginia was
long in settling herself. Virginia did not like the sound of Dorothea's
double sigh. Both listened anxiously for the doings of Tasso. He rested.

He was uneasy; he was rounding his basket once more; unaware of the
exaggeration of his iniquitous conduct, poor innocent, he shook that
dreadful coat of his! He had displaced the prophylactic cover of the
scarf.

He drove them in a despair to speculate on the contention between the
perfume and the stench in junction, with such a doubt of the victory of
which of the two, as drags us to fear our worst. It steals into our
nostrils, possesses them. As the History of Mankind has informed us, we
were led up to our civilization by the nose. But Philosophy warns us on
that eminence; to beware of trusting exclusively to our conductor, lest
the mind of us at least be plunged back into barbarism. The ladies hated
both the cause and the consequence, they had a revulsion from the object,
of the above contention. But call it not a contention: there is nobility
in that. This was a compromise, a degrading union, with very sickening
results